


Exquisite

by vetiverite



Series: Honeycomb [2]
Category: Alarm (2008), When Love Comes Along (1998)
Genre: Domestic, Happy together, Healing Sex, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Kink, Light Angst, M/M, Mal is a Grifter, Mark is a Hustler, New Relationship, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rimming, Shower Sex, They're Trying to Be Better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:08:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29882970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vetiverite/pseuds/vetiverite
Summary: After meeting at the sex club, Mal and Mark have become a couple pursuing an ordinary life-- which, for them, is full of surprises, first-time pleasures, and the hope of redemption.
Relationships: Mal (Alarm)/Mark (When Love Comes Along)
Series: Honeycomb [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2200563
Kudos: 7
Collections: GatheringFiKi - Kink Bingo 2021





	Exquisite

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to "Honeycomb". Written for FiKiGathering's 2021 Kink Bingo based on the prompt "Rimming".

Mal took the stranger home from the Honeycomb that night and never brought him back. The young man (so close to his own age, yet somehow decades older inside) did not resist or argue. He needed shelter, and Mal was probably the first person not to exact strange payments for it.

At least not stranger than previous transactions.

The dynamic wasn’t so clear during that first week. The force of their fucking nearly demolished the bedframe; Mal had to get out the toolbox and tighten all the screws. He had a clear suspicion that his houseguest thought he had to pay for his keep this way– sex on demand, as rough as Mal wanted it. But Mal didn’t. Oh, sure, he wanted sex, but not the hurtful kind. So at the end of the week he tried a different tack and just... _held_ the guy. Reached out with his arms and _held_ him.

And that changed everything.

The stranger is no longer a stranger. He’s Mark.

He’s sunlight, thin and transitory, breaking through thick clouds. It hardly warms you, but it’s still sunlight— a pale gleam where there’s only been darkness.

He’s a rare moth in the house, soft-winged and silent. You look for this magical creature as you enter each room because you fear damaging it by accident. You try not to touch, but when you do, fragments of its wings cling to your hand to remind you all day who waits at home.

He’s a book whose pages sometimes hold poetry and other times are blank. You never know which you will get until you open it—and you need to open it, because every time you do, you feel hope.

That’s what he’s like.

Mal makes sure to say Mark’s name as often as he can, because he’s not sure his houseguest has the fullest grip on himself. He could float away any day now. And Mal wants him to stay.

It’s quite a new thing for both of them.

They play it careful. It’s a rule: each never asks what the other one does, or did, or plans to do. That way, Mark never has to know what petty grifts and larcenous schemes Mal’s caught up in, and Mal never has to know that Mark regularly gave away his body in exchange for everything that would keep it alive. Food, shelter, drugs, and notebooks to scribble song lyrics in.

Mal read one once. Its author – deliberately, maybe – had left his notebook open on the kitchen counter.

_we don’t want you anymore  
_ _they said, and shut the door  
_ _i turned my back_  
_on everything I’d lacked  
_ _i took the cure_

That night in the darkened bedroom, Mal held Mark especially gently, especially close. And the next morning, Mark came up behind Mal at the kitchen counter and slid his arms around Mal’s waist and pressed his cheek against Mal’s back, and breakfast was an hour and a half late. 

Not because of sex, either. If you want to stand there in each other’s arms and breathe together, it’s a free country. Isn’t it?

All part of a growing list of firsts.

Mark’s used to sucking, not getting sucked. Mal’s used to fucking, not getting fucked. Neither are used to having kisses lavished on less-than-obvious places: back of neck, small of back, hollow of knee, arch of foot. Neither are accustomed to anyone _taking the time._

Which leads to this— and believe it, it’s no small thing to either of them.

It happens in the shower, amid billowing steam. They’re soaping each other up, using up ridiculous amounts of body wash— and that in itself is deserving of a sidebar. Neither ever thought to buy it for themselves, but since they got together, it’s become a shopping cart staple. Cue sidebar #2: _they go grocery shopping together._ Mal and Mark trundling down supermarket aisles, pushing a single cart! Wonders never cease.

Back to the shower. Heaping handsful of creamy shower wash; vanilla-laced almond and olive oil, total extravagance. Mark loves to rub fragrant sudsy palms over Mal’s torso, tracing labyrinths in his chest hair, following the obvious trail south. In return, Mal sends rivers of lather flowing down, down, down over Mark’s back and buttocks and thighs, every place he’s most sensitive. They both feel purified, redeemed, restored, reset. New.

Even so, when Mal turns him around so that he faces the tiles, some part of Mark still expects to be spread and just… slammed into. It’s happened so many times before, and never as part of an even exchange. Some fella in a club allows you one hit off his cigarette, and you’re so grateful for even the tiniest dose of nicotine, you let him raw-dog you in a piss-splashed bathroom stall— jamming his spit-lubricated cock in your never-quite-ready ass and ramrodding you until the stall door shakes half off its hinges…

But that happened then. It’s not happening now.

Mal kisses the back of Mark’s neck as he strokes upward from thigh to cleft, hardly pressing at first. Friendly. Non-invasive. He waits until Mark’s feet slide apart slightly of their own accord, and even then it’s still just gentle stroking from taint to small of back, now with the faintest dipping-in of fingertips slick with soap. 

Mark keeps his breathing steady, afraid this moment will vanish. Nothing this good could last anything more than a moment. Pleasure’s fleeting and fickle in his world. When will he learn that he and Mal together have more staying power than that?

Now. He learns now.

Mal’s firm hands bracket Mark’s hips, but not to yank them back so that he can drive his own forward, up, in, out. No, he holds onto Mark to steady himself as he kneels like one of the faithful, ready and eager to offer. 

_Okay?_ he asks.

_Yes,_ Mark whispers hoarsely, cheek against the cool tiles. 

And then the world contracts to a single point, the place where Mal’s tongue touches him, and not one single time in years of Mark being taken and taken and taken has anyone, _anyone_ , ever given him this. 

He has never spoken the word exquisite out loud in his life, never written it on paper, maybe never even thought it in his head. But that is what it is, this pleasure. _Exquisite:_ adjective, from the Latin _exquirare_ (sought out), meaning _extremely beautiful, delicate, rare, acute, intensely felt, endless, all-encompassing,_ like nothing Mark has ever known— clinging to the tile wall, unable to stifle his moans as Mal’s tongue swirls and strokes and then _(oh god oh god)_ enters him and _oh,_ slow, in and out, exquisite, exquisite…

He comes from that alone, and Mal’s instantly there behind him, not to fuck but to hold him up.

The next time he leaves his notebook out, the page has three words written on it for Mal alone to read.

No translation required.


End file.
